Police Hospital To Ill-Treat Fire Service Personnel

The Police Hospital in Accra, in collaboration with the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), has admitted to treat illing fire officers as part of an agreement with the two services, to ensure the safety of fire officers, who get injured in the line of duty.

The Chief Fire Officer, Dr Albert Brown Gazie, made this announcement at the launch of the maiden medical screening for operational fire officers at the Fire Service Training School in Accra.

According to him, the first phase of the health screening exercise, will be carried out in Accra, Tema, Takoradi and Kumasi and later replicated in other regions to protect front line officers of the service.

He said, the exercise in collaboration with a team of doctors from the Ministry of Health was to uncover hidden diseases in the bodies of safety officers across the country.

He said, the exercise was to ensure operational officers, come alive in the wake of inhalation of toxics during fire fighting exercises across the country.
He noted that the exercise was expected to screen mainstream officers of the service to keep officers of the service alive.

He noted that it was pathetic to see operational officers of the service die out of preventable diseases, because of lack of periodic screening.

He said, as a leader of the service, he could sit down for his operational colleagues to die out of these diseases that could be treated when detected early.

He explained the screening of officers was a standard practice to ensure the safety of officers and not an exercise to recommend the exit of ailing officers as
speculated by some members of the service.

He noted that as an operational man who rose through the ranks of the service, he is much worried about the safety of operational officers, hence the need to commence the screening exercise to assist members to know their health status.

He took the opportunity to assure officers that the exercise is confidential and the results would be kept by the team of doctors for the needed measures to be taken by the service to protect members.

On his part, the leader of the team of doctors to supervise the one week long screening exercise, Dr Zakaria Adams, said they expect to screen one hundred service officers a day, totaling about five hundred at the end of the exercise in the Accra-Tema area.

He maintained that findings of the screening, would be confidentially presented to the managers of the service for the needed action to be taken on matters that will arise out of the screening.